Design and Art Australia Online

cartoonist, was born on 3 December 1888 in Los Angeles, California of English parents who met in Queensland, married in Sydney and left for America after the wedding. His architect father hoped to make money there but only found work as a carpenter (he became secretary of the American Carpenters’ Union). In 1892, when Stan was aged four, the family settled in Perth. Stan left school at 16 and worked as a clerk (draughtsman) in the WA Railways Department, studying Fine Art at Perth Technical College at night and doing freelance work for various Perth newspapers: the Sunday Times , the Western Mail and the United Licensed Victuallers Association Journal . He wrote in a private letter (quoted Lindesay 1994, 6): 'We had quite a considerable art colony in Perth in those days: one quite big enough to support a sketch club, of which I was secretary and treasurer’.

In 1912, Cross resigned from the railways to go to London and study at St Martin’s School for a year. (His daughter says it was actually the Slade and Lindesay and Blaikie are wrong, but Rainbow also says St Martin’s; Shiell (ed.), p.115, says he spent 18 months in London at St Martin’s and other studios.) While in London he had some cartoons accepted by Punch . He returned to Perth and worked freelance, contributing drawings to the Western Mail and the Sunday Times . In 1918, still in his early 20s, he was invited to Sydney by Claude McKay to join Cecil Hartt on the forthcoming Smith’s Weekly at £5 a week (a rather different story appeared in Smith’s 20/4/1935, 20). He became its highest paid artist and second art editor. Short-run series he devised included: 'Things That Make Stan Cross’ (political and economic criticism), 'Places We Have Never Visited’ (Law Courts, Parliament, the players’ room at a test cricket match, etc.), 'Museum of the Future’ and 'Firsts in Australian History’ (the first barmaid, the first strike, the first football match).

Cross was renowned for his Aboriginal (“Jacky”) jokes, which Blaikie calls merry and never cruel (ill. Blaikie, e.g. p.107) but which were condemned as stereotypes after Cross’s death, usually in letters defending Jolliffe 's superiority. Sue Cross says she and her son sighted a letter from a tribal Aborigine many years ago, since lost, thanking him for being the first to portray Aborigines as real people. Examples are: 'On the lot with the first All-Darkie Super Production’ 9 August 1930, 2, 'Governor Phillip Founds Australia’ 28 January 1933, 9.

Other subjects included anti-communist cartoons, e.g. Dignity and Impudence 26 November 1927 and one with Marx Turning in His Grave over 'Soviet Military Preparations’ 1 April 1922,1. Depression cartoons, e.g. 27 September 1930, 23: “Cheer up, Joe! Spare me days, anybody’ud think you owned the ___ depression!” Art v. progress joke showing two men looking at an industrial scene, Australian Landscape : Critic: “That’s not very artistic.” Australia: “No, but wouldn’t it be bonzer”’, Smith’s 28 July 1923, 3. A cartoon parodying Virgil shows two flappers, one scrawny the other fat, 21 January 1933, 11, with the note below:

Virgil, having gone into smoke to dodge a man who wanted to lend him £500 free of interest for 100 years, Stan Cross answered the urgent appeal of the art editor for a couple of flappers in deshabille for this page. Stan Cross’ flappers, it is confidently expected, will start Virgil drawing horses again with two left feet.

An anti-Nazi cartoon is dated 4 August 1934 ( German Frightfulness-Born in 1914, Still Going Wrong ), while Hollywood Brings Australia to the Films was published on 2 September 1939. SLNSW holds the original of An Olive Branch (couple having a 'domestic’) of 1937 (DG SV *CART 7).

Above all, Cross has been immortalised by “For gorsake stop laughing-this is serious!” ( Smith’s Weekly July 1933), Australia’s best-known single cartoon. Although the original is lost, tens of thousands of copies were printed on glossy paper and mailed throughout the world. See reprint by Smith’s titled The Joke of the Decade 12 August 1933, 7, with details of copies available for purchase and a photogravure (copy dated 5 August 1933 used in SH Ervin b/w exhibition 1999). Stan’s story of its creation was recounted in a letter to George Blaikie, dated 24 March 1967 (quoted Blaikie 65-66, Caban 40, and Lindesay (1994) 51-52, 55, original ML). It originated in editor Frank Marien inviting Stan to improve on a student’s flat joke about a falling builder having his leg pulled (Sue Cross claims the student was the artist Donald Friend, who certainly did draw cartoons in youth) – builders working on tall building sites being popular subjects for jokes at the time, especially in the US. A story about Cross’s version becoming popular in London too was published in Smith’s on 20 April 1935, 20. The ABWAC’s Stanley Award statuettes based on the two figures in the gag have been presented annually to the top black-and-white artists since 1985 (see Kerr, 1999).

Cross was keen on anatomical accuracy in his drawing (Caban, 40) and kept a life-size wooden dummy in the studio he shared with Hartt at Smith 's. It often appeared in the pub downstairs and stories about it abound, e.g. Henry Lawson reportedly tried to start up a conversation with it. Cross pioneered the comic strip in Australia in 1920 when he devised a running weekly commentary on the butter subsidy for Smith’s called 'You and Me’. 'Mr. Pott’ and 'Whalesteeth’ appeared in it and it led to his popular, syndicated strip 'Mr and Mrs Potts’ ('Mr Pott’ ill. Caban, 41). This was inherited by Jim Russell as 'The Potts’ in 1940 when Cross left Smith’s (in 1939) and Russell continued to draw it in the SMH until he died in 2001. Other strips by Cross were 'The Vaudevillians’, 'Norman and Rhubarb’ (begun 1928), 'Dad and Dave’ (including Dad and Dave’s trip to England) and 'Wally and the Major’. As 'The Winks’, he began drawing the last for the Melbourne Herald in 1940 (the first year he was working there). Later syndicated, it became the most popular daily and Sunday strip in Australia. Two originals drawn with Carl Lyon in 1938 and c.1938 (ML PXD 764) are presumably for it; another Cross original of c.1930s is in the same collection. Wally and the Major: An Advertiser Feature was published at Melbourne in 1945. Cross technically continued to draw the strip for the SMH until 1970, although after having a stroke in early 1960s resulted in Lyon drawing the strips in Stan’s name for a few months, then they were signed by both and finally Lyon took them over altogether, acc. Sue Cross. (Sue Cross also claims that he drew a strip, 'Rupert the Rabbit’, which was taken by the art editor and sold to the USA.)

Cross was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, along with 24 other men. He was president from 1931 to 1954 of its successor (generally seen as a continuation, especially by the ABWAC), 'the Black and White Artists’ Club’, having succeeded Cec. Hartt and being succeeded by Jim Russell, other foundation members.

Although working for the Melbourne Herald from 1939, Cross was always based in Sydney. He also wrote books on accountancy, economics and English grammar and treatises on soil conservation. He painted watercolours and there is some speculation that Cross and George Finey held the first exhibition at David Jones’s Art Gallery. In 1970 he retired from the Melbourne Herald and joined his family at Armidale (NSW) where he died on 16 June 1977, aged 88. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, 'Stop laughing, this is serious’. In 1985 a statuette based on his most famous cartoon was designed for the Stanley Awards, presented by the ABWAC. His wife Jessie died in 1972. Cross’s papers are now in the NLA.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007